Gene-Centred View of Evolution

The gene-centred view of evolution holds that the gene, not the individual organism and not the group or species, is the fundamental unit natural selection acts on, since genes are what actually persist and get copied across generations while every organism that carries them is temporary. On this view, an organism is usefully understood as a vehicle its genes build and use to get themselves copied into the next generation, and traits, including apparently altruistic or self-sacrificing behaviour, are explained by asking what effect they have on the reproductive success of the genes responsible for them, rather than on the individual or the group carrying them. Richard Dawkins proposed and popularised the view in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, building on earlier mathematical work by William Hamilton on kin selection and George Williams's 1966 critique of group-selection explanations, though Dawkins's book is credited with giving the position its name, its clearest statement, and its wide readership. The view remains one of the standard ways evolutionary biology frames the question of what selection is really selecting, alongside rival framings that give more weight to the organism, the group, or multiple levels at once, a dispute this atlas records directly through Stephen Jay Gould's critique of it.